As school resumes in Connecticut, teachers offer reassurance

The only thing normal about school in Connecticut Monday was the fact that orange buses still dropped off children like any other day.

Everything else was a bit surreal. For many, tension and anxiety replaced anticipation for the holiday break.

"It's been emotional for everybody. It hits home," said Chris Melillo, assistant superintendent of schools in Hamden. "You don't have to be an educator to feel it."

Indeed not. On the first day of classes since the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, teachers, parents and administrators tried to go about their business without letting the brutality of recent events overwhelm them.

Yet the school day had barely begun before schools in Ridgefield went into lockdown. A report of a suspicious person near a train station, who may have been holding a rifle, led authorities to dispatch a state police tactical unit to search the area. The threat led to the arrest of a man who was carrying an umbrella that looked like a weapon. Ridgefield schools later continued their day.

Morning routines and rituals felt strained everywhere, parents said.

"I was nauseous when I woke up, in anticipation of getting him out the door this morning," said Hamden mom Jen Slavin, as she waited outside Dunbar Hill School Monday afternoon for her 7-year-old son.

Branford parent Nicole Hitchcock usually has the morning news on TV as she prepares school bags, but kept the TV off on Monday. She has a son in middle school and a daughter in elementary school.

"Not today," Hitchcock said. "I didn't want to cause any more anxiety. I told my daughter I lost the remote."

But Hitchcock was determined not to buckle under to panic. "I thought, 'You can't give in to the fear,'" she explained. "I think everyone is on heightened awareness. Suddenly a school somewhere is in lockdown and you want to just drive to the school and pick your kids up."

The situation certainly was no less concerning for teachers themselves, who faced the likelihood of students with questions and comments about awful events.

"It might be as innocent as a kindergartner asking, 'Am I safe?'" said Eric Bailey, communications director for AFT Connecticut, a union that represents more than 12,000 teachers in the state. "Kids have questions. You need to take the time to answer them and not ignore them."

School districts across the state sent out guidelines for teachers to answer such questions with age-appropriate responses. They also posted information online for parents looking for help in talking with their children about the incident.

Bailey said he talked with teachers over the weekend who said they didn't feel ready to return to class, because they didn't want students to pick up on their trepidation.

"I wouldn't be surprised if there were some teachers who decided not to go in today, that it would be too hard," Bailey said. He noted that his union is committed to making sure teachers get counseling and support when they need it, whether it's this week or six months from now.

At East Haven High School, teacher Jay Miles began each of his classes Monday by letting any student say what he or she needed to say about Newtown - even if they needed to say that they were tired of hearing about it.

"In general, I think the students are a little overwhelmed by it," Miles said. "They realize the gravity of it."

Mark Waxenberg, executive director of the Connecticut Education Association, said the primary thing teachers needed to do Monday, in answer to students' questions, was "reassure children that they're safe, and that their teachers are going to keep them safe."

CEA represents 42,000 teachers around Connecticut. He said school security and emergency preparedness are topics being discussed in every teacher's room in the state this week.

"We want to make sure our teachers are actively involved in that dialogue," Waxenberg said. He added that right now, many teachers who work in the vicinity of Newtown are "in a state of shock. We have to deal with that."

In Monroe, a neighboring community to Newtown, Superintendent James Agostine said only that students "seemed pretty comfortable" in class Monday and that school attendance was not down significantly.

"We had a good day," Agostine said.

It seemed clear that each school district in the state attempted to strike the right balance between calm and concern.

For example, officials in Branford opted not to have a uniformed police presence at every school. Superintendent Hamlet Hernandez said maintaining a "sense of normalcy" was paramount in making that decision, and that existing security measures will suffice.

At the Sound School in New Haven, there was a moment of silence. Principal Rebecca Gratz also made a brief statement over the public address system.

"We're sad. We're deeply, deeply sad," Gratz said. "I was in the cafeteria first thing in the morning, and I heard students talking. Some had gone to vigils. One said he went out to Newtown. They were talking about it, processing it."